Human endeavour and organizational change alone will not compensate for deficiencies in natural endowments and the material inputs of modern agriculture. Systems that have used labour as a substitute for capital or technology have not escaped vast food deficits. This is demonstrated by the wide fluctuations in food production in the Soviet Union and China and their resultant recourse to large-scale imports from abroad.

In the last few years, developments in different parts of the world, especially in the matter of food, prompt reflection on the different theories of development that have been propounded from time to time. It has been said that certain forms of government or certain constitutional frameworks promote faster growth than others; that excessive individualism or concern with human rights and legal remedies may act as a brake on economic progress; and that some governments and states can be characterized as “soft states” with little prospect of rapid human improvement. The present economic crisis seems to belie such generalizations. Economic development is a complex process, and the reasons that some economies are growing more rapidly than others cannot be found solely in the forms of government or institutions prevalent in different societies.

Adequacy of resources and their efficient use play an important part in development. There are also random and uncontrollable factors, including the unpredictability of nature. Agricultural production is particularly vulnerable to such forces, and at one time or another almost all countries have to face the consequences of fluctuations in food production on the economy as a whole. Discipline in society is as essential as a determined effort to augment production and secure its equitable distribution. The choice of right priorities and technology is a must; we cannot ignore the fact that resources are limited and the efforts of individual countries to achieve self-sufficiency in food must be supported by international action to assist in meeting unforeseen contingencies.

The existence of present deficiencies should not detract from the very considerable progress in agricultural development that has already been achieved in several developing countries, including India. In contrast to the near-stagnation of the decades before India achieved independence in 1947, agricultural production since planning began in the early 1950s has maintained a long-term growth trend of about 3.5% annually. India is thus among the countries in which agricultural growth has been ahead of the growth in population, although not so much ahead as we would have liked. At the beginning of the 1950s, grain production was around 50 million–55 million metric tons; in the middle 1970s, it is in the neighbourhood of 105 million–110 million metric tons. In a matter of two decades, grain production in absolute terms has been doubled. In the early stages, most of the increase came about through the extension of cultivation, but as land became scarcer, reliance had to be placed on increasing productivity per hectare. The advent of new technology in the mid-1960s, including high-yielding varieties of seeds and the massive application of fertilizer, along with a package of improved practices, has led to a significant transformation of agriculture in some parts of India, notably the northwest.

The Green Revolution: a mixed picture

For anyone with an adequate understanding of production processes in a country like India, with its widely divergent conditions, there was neither euphoria nor subsequent disenchantment about the so-called Green Revolution. Both attitudes reflect oversimplification and lack of touch with the situation on the ground.

In recent years, there has been a sharp increase in the consumption of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, in minor irrigation, in the spread of improved varieties of seeds, and in the provision of credit and marketing facilities. This tempo of progress must be sustained and extended to other parts of the country. In particular, attention is now being given to dry-farming techniques and to major irrigation schemes, along with intensive area development. The structure of production in rural society is of vital importance, and this is why land reforms are crucial to India’s agricultural program.

Planning and technology

In the last 20 years, two million people have acquired title to land for the first time. Landless labourers are being given house sites and loans to build homes of their own. Ceilings have been placed on the total area that a person or a family can own, and the surplus is being distributed among the landless. There is considerable resistance to this from the bigger landowners, and the implementation of these programs has been rather slow.

Just as, at the international level, the more advanced nations are in a better position to use science and technology for further advancement, so at our national level we find that intensive farming methods and the extension services of the agricultural universities have benefited the comparatively well-off farmer, widening the gap between him and others in the rural community. To correct this imbalance, it is only fair that the new rural rich should contribute to rural uplift, since their prosperity is due to the inputs now available to them. Recently we have launched special programs to help marginal farmers and cultivators in dry areas.

In any drought-stricken area in India, the sudden and total drop in purchasing power is even more serious than the loss of crops. Even if enough food can be moved in from other parts of the country, few can afford to buy it. Hence we are compelled to start public works that will generate some income immediately and enable people to feed themselves rather than subsist on food doles. In 1965–66, when two successive monsoons failed in eastern India, we provided work for three million people. In 1971–72, when the rains bypassed Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Rajasthan in western India, 9.5 million people were employed on relief works. To have averted deaths during droughts of such magnitude is no mean achievement.

The increase in the production of grain and other crops has been uneven because of climatic variations from year to year. Even now, only about 25% of our cultivated area is irrigated. In view of the shortage of funds, investment in irrigation has traditionally been of a protective nature. Only during the last few years has it been possible to provide resources for the full utilization of available water through irrigation systems. With improved water management and assured inputs, especially of fertilizer, it has been estimated that India could double its food production in the next 15 years. Some developing countries have an even higher potential. In the current year it is unlikely that requirements will be met, even though we are giving the highest priority to fertilizer imports.

The world shortage of fertilizer is a major handicap to all developing countries in the medium term. The maldistribution of fertilizer stems partly from variations in natural endowments, but mainly it is a result of the inability of the developing countries to invest adequately in fertilizer production. International action must be initiated to correct this. The world cannot risk the free play of market forces in a commodity like fertilizer, any more than in food supplies. Equitable distribution of the limited fertilizer available in the world should be an integral part of the world food security system.

Ensuring world food security

Recent experience also indicates that a world without want cannot come into being unless nations agree among themselves to create an emergency food reserve that can be used in times of need and a world buffer stock of grain that can be used to level out fluctuations in food production and prices.

On the national plane, hardly any country is able to operate a free market system in so basic a commodity as grain. Price support is necessary to protect producers, and some control has to be exercised over stocks and distribution in the interest of the consumer. Difficulties arise partly from the nature of the cycle of agricultural production and partly because of unequal distribution of incomes within each country. They are aggravated in those countries where the demand for food has been rising faster than domestic supplies.

The world must think in terms not of free trade but of arrangements that will ensure the distribution of limited food supplies in accordance with some criterion of need, rather than solely on the basis of purchasing power. Such arrangements may involve an international system of voluntary contributions to a world buffer stock; alternatively, they could take the form of an agreement among nations to maintain a minimum level of stocks for times of scarcity in accordance with internationally agreed rules. They imply national and international action to create adequate and efficient storage capacity and a conscious decision to control consumption when crops are good in order to build adequate stocks for the future. This is especially necessary in the richer countries.

Any system of food security for the world will mean some sacrifices, some curtailment of current consumption on the part of the developed countries. If they substituted direct use of grains, vegetables, and other foods for even one-third of their meat and poultry consumption, enough supplies would be released to make up the potential world deficit in cereals. World demand for grain has gone up not only because of increasing population and improved diets in the less developed countries, but also because of changing consumption patterns within affluent countries. They have the means to pay for what they want and, in the process, the limited resources of the world are wasted and the really needy are deprived. Voluntary restraint or the turning of enlightened enthusiasts to vegetarianism will make hardly any dent. Eating habits and patterns of production must be guided by systematic fiscal and other governmental action in order to influence the relative prices of different products.

Until recently there was no shortage of grain on a global scale; yet from time to time individual countries have faced acute shortages and have lacked the funds to import supplies from other regions. Within the poor countries, the main brunt is borne by the weakest sections of the populace. Thus national policies are as important as international action. The entire philosophy of development—as it affects an individual nation and the world as a whole—has so far concentrated attention on problems of economic growth and of ensuring relative rates of growth that will reduce disparities among developing and developed countries. It is now generally realized that this approach to development is inadequate. The attack on poverty must be more direct, within nations as among nations. Such an approach involves massive redistribution of economic opportunities, not merely transfers from rich to poor through bilateral or international aid programs. It involves devising worldwide arrangements to assure the world’s poor that technological progress will not be to their disadvantage, that economic growth will be everywhere accompanied by social justice.

The overpopulation question

Underdevelopment, poverty, and hunger are often regarded as consequences of burgeoning population. Many in the affluent lands, reading at their breakfast table of starvation in Africa or Asia, are content to shrug their shoulders and blame it on the increase in numbers.

There is no question but that world population must be contained. Poorer countries have made large outlays on population control; however, the basic problem is one not of money but of personnel, not of methods but of motivation. Couples do not decide on the size of their family in terms of its effect on the per capita income of the nation or on the world’s food problem. What concerns them is the effect on their own standard of living. For educated, well-to-do parents, each new baby makes heavy demands on time and budget. For the really poor, an extra child makes hardly any difference. It may, in fact, be regarded as an earner and a helper.

India has the largest officially sponsored family-planning program of any country, and our birthrate has been coming down, though it varies sharply from state to state. It is lower where per capita incomes are high or where women have more education and wider interests. For the country as a whole, the birthrate has fallen from 41 per 1,000 population to 37 in the last decade, but it is 30 in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, where education has made great headway, and 33 in Punjab, where the increase in agricultural production has been tangible. Family planning cannot be viewed in isolation. It is part of development.

Our increased population is not due entirely to new births. Thanks to our public health programs, which have curbed, although not yet eradicated, several diseases, the life span of the average Indian has risen and the death rate, which was 31 per 1,000 population in the 1930s, is down to 17 per 1,000. We cannot rest on our laurels, however. We find, for instance, that mosquitoes have reappeared and that the new strain is resistant to insecticides.

Considering the vast number of people involved and the rising cost of modern medicine, we must place greater emphasis on the prevention of disease. Proper nutrition and sanitation are essential. So is education, especially of mothers. Some knowledge of elementary care could prevent much illness. For example, almost four-fifths of blindness could be prevented by giving babies the vitamins so handily found in leafy vegetables.

We are encouraging a new approach to medical education and organization so that health services are not concentrated around hospitals but reach out to village homes. Indigenous systems of medicine, the Ayurvedic and the Unani, have centuries of experience behind them. To give one example, the Sarpagandha plant has long been known as a cure for ailments of the heart and nervous system, but our modern doctors ignored it until it was rediscovered by the West and given a place in pharmacopoeias under the name reserpine. We have descriptions of caesarean sections and plastic surgery as they were performed in ancient times and of many efficacious rural remedies that should now be investigated scientifically. We have seen how the ancient Chinese practice of acupuncture has suddenly aroused worldwide interest. Even science is not immune to the dictates of dogma!

I wonder if any contemporary society is satisfied with its educational system. The developing countries face special problems, however, for the colonial education structures most of them inherited have proved wholly inadequate for the needs of a developing economy. We read that China has succeeded in overhauling its educational fabric by totally breaking with the past and by cutting itself off from the world for an entire generation. But it is not always possible or even desirable to do this.

In India there has been a phenomenal quantitative growth in education. The school population has increased from around 23 million to nearly 90 million in three decades, and the number of college students from 300,000 to 3 million. Several qualitative changes have also taken place—a new emphasis has been placed on science and engineering and on the building up of scientific research centres and national laboratories, some of which have earned international renown. Still, the large majority of our young people pass through the educational mill without acquiring the vocational skills they need to earn a living or, what is more important, the confidence and intellectual attributes that will enable them to face life.

An open and democratic society grants many rights to the individual; it also expects far more responsibility and maturity from him than an authoritarian society does. The number of our educated unemployed has grown, but many of them are unemployable. Everyone talks of the need for change but most are afraid of it and resist it. We are indeed witnessing a greater demand for vocational training, and more polytechnics and agricultural colleges are being established. We are advised that higher education should be restricted, but this raises a pertinent social question. All these years, opportunities for higher education have been confined to a privileged few. Should its doors be closed just when other classes and sections of the population are able to avail themselves of it?

Experiments in education are being undertaken by individuals and organizations in many countries. I was especially interested to learn of UNESCO’s educational work in some countries of Africa. However, the basic issues concerning educational reforms are often clouded over by a preoccupation with unemployment. The sole purpose of education is not to enable young people to get jobs or even to know more, but to help them become better human beings, growing in awareness and compassion so they can grapple with the problems of today and be prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.

In the beginning I referred to the remarkable progress made by science and its demonstrated capacity to fulfill human requirements. How do we harness this creative potential for national and global purposes? Too often, scientific knowledge has been made subservient to national objectives, especially in the realms of energy and metallurgy. In medicine there is a somewhat greater awareness of international responsibility. Certainly a wider pooling of experience and inquiry in the fields of agriculture and nutrition is called for.

A consortium of technical experts drawn from different countries, disciplines, and organizations could ensure that scientific programs are based upon critical action-reaction analyses. There have been reports of changes in the global weather pattern. The variations we have experienced during the past few years are unfortunately to our disadvantage, and the position of the Sahelian zone of Africa is even worse. Thus there is little time to lose in initiating a new style of national scientific endeavour and a type of international cooperation that is designed to eradicate hunger and poverty.

National interests in a shrinking world

No country can afford to take a narrow view of its own interests, since it has to live in a world that is closely interlinked. The richer regions cannot abdicate their concern. Prosperity for some cannot be enjoyed in the midst of poverty for most. It is not military confrontation alone that imperils world peace; disparity is an equal danger. As Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, power has to be made secure not only against power but also against weakness. So the quest for an egalitarian society is not merely humanitarian. It is a practical necessity if the world order is to survive.

Perhaps we are still remote from a meaningful system of world taxation and redistribution of wealth through such taxation, but international economic policy must at least aim at securing rapid growth in world income, greater equality of opportunity among the nations of the world, and a worldwide system of economic security, especially food security. In 1974 two major world congresses were held, one dealing with population and the other with food supply. These subjects are of vital importance for most developing countries. It is to be hoped that the congresses provided us with some insight into the thinking of those who have the power to help the less fortunate among their fellow human beings.

Whether one thinks in terms of geography, historical perspective, or cultural patterns, it seems as though Europe and North America have long regarded their two continents as the hub of the world. Formerly, as far as they were concerned, Africa and Asia existed to be used for their purposes—and indeed this was the case for many long years. Colonialism has gone, but their attitude of self-importance continues. Interest is taken in our development, but the criteria they use to assess our progress are those of contemporary trends in the affluent countries; their angle of vision is still based on their interest and global strategy. They ignore the relevance of climate, of geographical compulsion and the forces of history, of centuries of national experience and civilization.

When foreigners visit India, they profess shock at our poverty. They have no idea of the stupendous effort required for a nation of 560 million (with such wide diversity and such different levels of development among regions) just to survive in this fast-changing and highly competitive world—to say nothing of traveling from one age to another as we are trying to do. The living conditions of the people of India and other developing countries should be compared not with conditions in the rich countries but with the state of affairs prevailing at the time of our liberation from colonial rule.

It is easy for rich nations to forget that they too had poverty not so long ago and that pockets of poverty still exist in the heart of their plenty and extravagance. I write this with no thought of complaint or accusation, for I am only too conscious of the fact that a similar situation exists in my own country—and perhaps in other developing countries as well—between town and village. Those who live in cities tend to think that they are India and that the rural areas, where the vast majority of our people live, are on the periphery.

The pattern of growth that we have copied from the advanced countries itself generates dissatisfaction. And disquiet is most marked in those sections whose expectations are the highest, such as the urban, educated middle classes and skilled workers in the more sophisticated industries. In a way, the outlook of such groups is similar to that of the people of rich countries: a feeling that they alone matter and a disinterestedness in the welfare of the huge numbers who live in villages. Unless the minds of people are remolded, infused with comprehension of and compassion for the suffering of the many, progress itself will be unreal.

In the Western world, the political revolution followed the economic revolution, but here they are taking place simultaneously. When a giant heaves itself awake after centuries of sleep, much dust will be raised. When a country is aroused after generations of apathy, many types of evil will come to the surface. Today, our countries are in ferment. We must try to understand the primary forces behind the changes that are shaking our societies, instead of finding fault with the efforts governments are making to solve age-old problems, made vastly more complex by the new problems of growth and by the interaction of global crosscurrents.

I have written mostly about India, for that is where my own experience lies. By and large, similar situations exist in other developing countries although, because of India’s greater size and population, every problem here assumes gigantic proportions. Developing countries do need assistance at various levels and in varying degrees, but equally they need deeper understanding of their aspirations and difficulties.